Marcus: I’m at your apartment.
I don’t respond. Just watch the dots disappear. No third message. Just that—petulant, entitled, a child denied his toy.
“He’s pissed,” I say. “Apparently he’s at the apartment.”
“Good,” Alex says again. “Now he’s off-balance. Use that.”
We drive in silence for a few blocks. Past Dilworth Park. Past City Hall lit up against the dark sky. Past all the landmarks I know, all the streets I’ve walked, now leading me toward something that feels like a trap.
“You’ve got this,” Alex says.
Her hands are white-knuckling the steering wheel now. We’re on Broad Street. Close.
“I don’t feel like I’ve got this,” I admit.
“You don’t have to feel it. You just have to do it.” She pulls over half a block from The Bellevue. Parks. Turns to face me fully. “You negotiate your way out of being glued to his side. Then you work the room. Gather intel. Names, connections, who talks to whom. All of it.”
“Alex—”
“I’m here.” She cuts me off, voice tight. “Even when I’m pissed at you, I’m here. Because that’s what we do. What we’ve always done.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“Text me if you need an extraction. I’ll fake an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?”
“The kind involving your fake dead dad coming back to life.” She’s not joking. But there’s almost a smile. Almost. “I’ll figure it out. Just text.”
“Your location’s on?”
She holds up her phone. Shows me the map. A blue dot that’s me, sitting in this car. “Yeah. Keep yours on too. All night.” She taps my screen. “I’ll be watching. If that dot goes anywhere it shouldn’t—anywhere private, anywhere I can’t get to you?—”
“You’ll do something reckless.”
“I’ll do something necessary.” She’s not joking. “Don’t let him take you anywhere alone, Dylan. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Dandelions?”
“Dandelions.”
She squeezes my hand. Hard. Quick. Then releases.
“Thank me by coming back with enough evidence to bury him.” Her voice drops. Serious. “And Dylan? When you feel something tonight—anything—don’t question it. Just trust it. Okay?”
She’s asking me to do the thing we fought about. To listen to intuition without demanding proof first.
“Okay,” I say. And mean it.
She nods once. Final. Then gestures toward the entrance half a block away. “Now go. You’re fashionably late. That’s good. Let him wonder.”
I climb out. The February cold hits my bare shoulders like a slap.
The dress shifts with each step, the high slit doing exactly what Marcus designed it to do.
But I’m not thinking about that.
